


a kind of undressing

by nuttyshake



Category: RWBY
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-16
Updated: 2019-12-16
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:42:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21812365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nuttyshake/pseuds/nuttyshake
Summary: There were marks, and then there were soulmarks. The former, Blake had all over her body, and she wasn’t ashamed of. The latter, on the other hand, were supposed to connect her to her soulmate, and for the life of her, Blake had been terrified of the person behind the star-shaped scar she'd had since birth on the lower side of her abdomen.Most people agreed that the marks represented one of your soulmate’s traits, or replicated your soulmate’s touch in another life. They were usually pretty tame in nature - a heart-shaped birthmark, a name, a word. All the books said they were supposed to heal what regular marks had ruined. Yet for all of her troubles, Blake got a stab wound.What kind of soulmate would do that to her?Then, one day, a blonde human girl waltzed into her life, with the same scar on her right arm.
Relationships: Blake Belladonna/Yang Xiao Long
Comments: 10
Kudos: 279





	a kind of undressing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [QueenReyna25](https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenReyna25/gifts).



If there was anything all of Blake’s friends - comrades - colleagues - could agree on, it was that you couldn’t expect a Faunus to have perfectly unmarred skin, and there was no use being self-conscious about it. Living as a Faunus in a human world meant learning early on that humans were out to get you, and that when they got their hands on you, you’d bear the signs on your body forever. She’d grown up on horror stories like those, and then she’d seen for herself, when she was not yet old enough, what hatred could do to people like her. But there were marks, and then there were _soul_ marks.

The former, Blake had all over her body, and she wasn’t ashamed of. The small patch of fur missing by her ear told a story, the cut on her neck identified her as a survivor. The latter, on the other hand, were supposed to connect her to her soulmate, and for the life of her, Blake had been terrified of the person behind the star-shaped scar she'd had since birth on the lower side of her abdomen.

There was no one way a soulmark could manifest on someone’s skin, at least that she could find. Most people agreed that the marks represented one of your soulmate’s traits, or replicated your soulmate’s touch in another life. They were usually pretty tame in nature - a heart-shaped birthmark, a name, a word. All the books said they were supposed to heal what regular marks had ruined. Yet for all of her troubles, Blake got a stab wound.

What kind of soulmate would do that to her?

_A human_ , voices hissed in her head. One of them in particular, who’d had it way worse than her - probably worse than anyone - when he’d been branded over his eye. _Only a human would do this to you_.

So Blake had stayed away from humans at large, and away from love. If that was how it looked like, then she didn’t want anything to do with it. She focused on helping the Faunus, on supporting their façade business - a small tea and coffee shop in the heart of Vale - and shut everything else out.

Then, one day, a blonde human girl waltzed into her life, with the same scar on her right arm.

  


Blake’s first impression of Yang was that she never shut up, wasn’t afraid of anything, and laughed a little too loud at her own jokes.

She was also smarter than anyone gave her credit for, and she didn’t _just_ show up at the book club meetings they sometimes hosted at the shop to flirt with Blake. She never came unprepared and often provided interesting insight, no matter what the subject matter was.

And though she tried pretending her presence annoyed her, and ignoring her advances - Blake couldn’t help but like her. Not just the way she looked, or even her personality - she liked the way her mind worked, which was, for her, a compliment of the highest order. 

It was new, being surrounded by so much light. It was harder to push it away when it shone through as easily as the sun through a canopy of trees. It made her want to reach out, sometimes, the longing - like this girl had carved out a piece of Blake’s heart and created a void that could only be filled by her presence. Now she spent entire days with her head burrowed in Yang’s shoulder, their legs tangled together on Yang’s couch - listening to her telling her stories, fingers carving through her hair, making her forget about the phone in her pocket probably blowing up with messages from Adam.

He’d never approve of her, Blake knew. If he found out, she’d be forced not to see her anymore, and that would probably kill her. She wanted to let herself believe, just for the moments they were together, that she could be allowed this.

And then, on a summer afternoon, when Blake and Yang finally decided they were done pretending, Yang took off her shirt while Blake mouthed over every new inch of skin, and she exposed her arm and shoulder for the first time.

Blake freaked out. It had nothing to do with the blonde’s arms being extremely tan and well-defined, though in other circumstances, that would have definitely played a part. No, it was the soulmark right under her bicep, so similar to hers - the reminder that she’d been hurt once, that she’d be hurt again. And by the person whose body she was currently kissing all over.

“What’s that?” she asked, faking curiosity. The arms that were holding her up over Yang started shaking under her weight.

Yang looked at her mark like she was seeing it for the first time. Like she’d never had to care about it for a day of her life. Then shrugged. “My soulmate must be clumsy.”

So it _was_ a soulmark, and not a birthmark, or a regular scar. She was going to be sick.

“Blake? What’s wrong?”

Yang seemed like the kind of person who wouldn’t hurt a fly - at least, not if the fly hadn’t done something to warrant her wrath first. She could defend herself, for sure, and had protected Blake several times, as well. But two people having the same mark was definitely conspicuous, and the kind of connection she felt with Yang - well, she’d never felt it with anyone else before. Adam had only taught her to burn, and this was a simmering, low and steady, like background music she was only now paying attention to, or the distinctive scent of home you only caught after being away for a while.

“Blake?” Yang tried to touch her cheek, but she pulled away, flinching. She tasted ashes in her mouth.

“I’m tired,” she only said, and threw her legs over the side of the couch, getting off of her. “I’m going home.”

“Blake.”

Blake couldn’t bear to look at her. If she did, she’d probably cave, her own self-preservation be damned. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” she lied, and didn’t look back.

  


Clearly, blocking her number hadn’t been enough. Blocking all of her accounts, on any social network known to man - because Yang was on _all_ of them - hadn’t been enough. Trying not to think about her had been useless, and banning her from the shop had been useless, too, because now she kept _dreaming_ about her.

They were such weird dreams, too. She was sure they came from one of Yang’s stories, the one about the dark, brooding heroine being saved by her dashing best friend, who actually did nothing more and nothing less than give her the strength to save herself; but in the dream, everything went wrong.

Blake was always the brooding heroine, pinned to the ground by someone she couldn’t see, except for an occasional flash of red, and when Yang swept in to save her, she was cut down. She didn’t remember much else - the smell of blood, maybe, the sounds of a fight, the thump of a body falling to the ground not far behind her - but every time she had that dream, she’d wake up with her soulmark throbbing, and the pain wouldn’t go away for a few minutes.

Sometimes, she saw a waterfall. Those dreams were slightly better, at least until she was forced to open her eyes and the warmth of Yang’s touch - forehead against forehead, hand against cheek, knee against thigh - would be forgotten, leaving her cold in the morning air.

It got so bad that she started flinching around Adam, just because the flashes of red in his hair made her feel sick. He demanded explanations she couldn't give him, got mad when she refused to be touched by him - and eventually, Blake was forced to lie to him, say she was going back to Menagerie to see her family, when actually she camped out at Sun's place for the week.

Sun only ever had one piece of advice when Blake came to him with an Adam problem, and that was to _dump him._ Blake only ever had one reply at the ready: _We were never even together._ Adam was her partner, and while she may have harbored a schoolgirl crush on him a long time ago, his appreciation of her had quickly devolved into a creepy obsession, which, along with him always having operated in a morally gray area, had turned her off him forever. It seemed he'd never quite got the memo, though, and so there they were, he acting like a jealous boyfriend, she trying to figure out how to break up with someone she wasn't dating.

Sun had never liked the guy, and he never passed a chance to remind her. For the first time, however, Blake figured she had bigger problems to deal with.

"It's that girl again?" Sun asked, teapot and cups clattering in his hands as he got busy preparing her favorite.

Blake brushed back a lock of her hair, remembering the last conversation she'd had with Sun about Yang. _Sounds like you're in love with her_. "I keep dreaming about her."

Sun raised an eyebrow.

"They're not nice dreams," she rushed to add. "Not all of them, anyway."

"But there _are_ nice dreams," was all that Sun heard.

Blake blushed. "Yes."

"You're just letting your head run wild again. You should try this new chamomile tea before sleeping -" he slid it to her over the kitchen table, "I promise, it's really good. Haven't had a nightmare in weeks."

Blake wasn't one to discount the healing properties of tea, but she didn't think he understood the problem. "She has my same soulmark, Sun. That means we're bonded. My dreams aren't just dreams, and my nightmares-”

"Does she hurt you in your dreams?"

Blake paused to think about it. Whenever she could see Yang's face clearly, she only remembered the warmth, the tenderness. It was how she felt whenever she was around her. The nightmares only featured flashes of red in the darkness and Yang's screams, and Blake could never tell what was going on.

"I'm not sure," she decided, "But I hear her screams, and then - then I wake up in pain."

"That doesn't mean anything."

"Our soulmark is a _scar_."

"No, your scar is a _soulmark._ ”

Blake shrugged. “So?”

“So I’ve never heard of soulmates being anything less than perfect for each other. I know you like to think everything bad could and will happen to you, and there _are_ variables we cannot predict the outcome of - but this is supposed to be the one thing we _can_ trust."

Blake found herself wondering if Sun’s overly simplistic view of love didn’t clash against her equally simplistic view of… well, soulmark symbolism. Blake had known for a long time that reality was much more complicated than what she read in her books, but that didn’t necessarily mean it would be all bad, all the time. Maybe she was just choosing to read the signs in the worst possible light, and convincing herself that it was the way things were supposed to be.

Still. "I don't know, Sun. I've never had much luck in the romance department."

"That's because you keep sabotaging yourself by sticking with that Adam guy."

"I'm not _sticking_ with him, we work together. What do you want me to do?"

Sun almost never looked serious. That's when you knew you had to listen. "I want you to recognize the influence he has on your life, and that the only reason you see your soulmark as your doom is because _he_ 's got you convinced that you’re never allowed to be happy.” And without waiting for a reply, he filled an empty teacup and slid it her way, effectively shutting down any further discussion. “Tea’s served. Careful, it’s hot.”

  


_**Yang Xiao Long** has been unblocked_

_**[6/10, 3:40 PM]** **Blake** : do you have the dreams too?_

_**[6/10, 10:23 PM]** **Blake:** Yang_

_**[7/10, 0:37 AM]** **Blake:** I just want to talk_

_  
_ Adam found her in the morning, right after Sun left for work.

It wasn’t pretty.

Her phone was smashed to pieces the moment she opened the door, assuming it was just Sun who had forgotten his keys as always - and Blake was too startled at the sudden motion to even scream. She tried to back away, instead - wrong move, because Adam only advanced on her and backed her up against a wall.

When he spoke, it was more like a growl. “What did you think you were doing?”

Blake gasped for air, trying to push him back, but he wouldn’t budge. “Please, let me go.”

“ _Coward_ ,” he hissed. “Hiding at your friend’s house, while the rest of us are forced to pick up after you. You couldn’t even look me in the eyes and tell me you wanted out.”

“Want… out?” she choked out. “You think this is about the White Fang?”

“I don’t _care_ what this is about,” Adam said, then grabbed her arm and forcefully pushed her to the ground.

The red flashes came back. Her scar started throbbing.

“You do not leave me. That’s what you promised.”

“I thought you were _different_ ,” she whined, but to no avail, because Adam still towered over her and was now leaning in to whisper in her ear.

“I thought you were different, too.”

_Running away again?_ He also said, but another him - in another time, another place. _Is that what you’ve become, my love?_

_I’m not running,_ the other her replied, her blade crashing against his.

_You will._

She was slammed back into her body to the sound of the front door opening again, taking Adam by surprise as well. Had Sun _really_ forgotten something? Had he heard the commotion and called the police?

But it only took Blake one glance to see that it was the wrong shade of blonde, and her skin was paler, too, her eyes the same color as…

In another life, Blake’s aura started flickering after hitting a wall of rock. Someone cried _Blake,_ and they cried _Blake_ right before the red flashes, too, just like Yang was crying out for her now and diving forward.

_I’m going to destroy everything you love._

She didn't know why Yang had picked that moment to show up, but Adam was already charging towards her, and all that Blake knew was that she had to protect her from him. 

_Starting with her._

And so, in the moment it took Adam to acknowledge the new presence and start throwing a few punches, which Yang carefully avoided, Blake grabbed the nearest object she could lift - which turned out to be some ancient miniature Sun had gotten from Neptune as a gift - and used it to knock him down.

Adam’s body hit the floor with a thump; Yang, who’d been trying to land a hit, lost her balance and tripped right over him. The silence that followed was deafening.

“Wh- did you-” Yang kept opening and closing her mouth, her eyes going from Adam to Blake. “Did you just _kill_ him?”

“Wish I had,” Blake muttered, “but no, he’s just unconscious.”

“I’m calling the police,” she said, jumping up like Adam could wake up again any second (and he could) and already reaching for her phone. Blake stopped her by holding her hands in her own, which was half a way to keep her from inadvertently ruining her life and half an excuse to just touch her.

“Don’t,” Blake said breathlessly - both from the contact and from the physical altercation. “He knows things about me. If they bring him to the police station, he’s gonna get me in serious trouble.”

Yang didn’t exactly know about her involvement with the White Fang, but she still didn’t miss a beat. “Then what-”

“I’ll call Sienna Khan, our leader. She’ll know what to do.” And she cupped Yang’s face in her hands in what was meant to be a comforting gesture. “Let’s tie him up while we wait for her to come and get out of here, okay?”

Again, Yang went with it, asking no questions, just following Blake’s lead and occasionally checking to make sure Adam didn’t show any signs of waking up yet.

It had been bad, sure. And yet, it could’ve been worse. Was Adam a curse that she would carry through all of her lives? Would her heart and spirit be broken by him, only to be healed by Yang over and over again? What had the first Blake done that was terrible enough that she could never fully escape Adam’s presence, and would she ever not survive it?

She held Blake’s hands through the wait and while she called Sun to tell him what happened, whispering sweet nothings and encouragements into her ear - _it’ll be okay, he can’t hurt you anymore, I’m here and even though you’ve been so brave, I still need to protect you._

She hadn’t seen Yang in a week - she hadn’t seen her since her last lifetime - and there she was now, ready to go all out and protect Blake as she had every other time, no matter what kind of horrific scars would come with it. The mark on her arm was proof of that.

Yang was still catching her breath, hair slightly disheveled, eyes wide and entirely focused on Blake, and Blake couldn’t remember how it felt to give this up. How could all the different versions of her stand being apart from Yang for so long - a year or two, in most cases, but there was that one time Blake never came back, not once in their entire lives - when she was already caving _now_?

Sienna came and took Adam. She seemed to take no notice of the way a human and a Faunus were sitting close together on the bench right outside; just promised she would take care of it, of him, that he’d never bother them again. Blake told her Adam might still be dangerous, that when finding out he was betrayed he might plot to take power for himself, and encouraged her to question his closest allies in the organization. Then Sienna left, and Blake and Yang were alone.

Blake had so many questions for her. She decided to start with the simplest one. “What were you doing back there? How did you know where to find me?”

“I, uh-” Yang rubbed the back of her head, seemingly not embarrassed but trying to find a way to convey too many things at once, “I would love to tell you I just _knew_ , but I actually didn’t. I was following _him_. I didn’t want him to hurt you.”

“But how- how did you know he would?” As far as Blake knew, Yang had never even _seen_ Adam in this life.

“He always does,” Yang sounded more frantic now, “always, when I’m not there. But not this time.”

Blake’s hand slid down Yang’s upper arm and caressed the patch of skin where the scar was etched. Thank god, thank god it was just a soulmark, not a real injury, not a real scar. Yang’s hand curled protectively over Blake’s hip in return, thumb swiping at the scar on her lower abdomen. “He always hurts you, too.”

Yang furrowed her eyebrows for all of two seconds, and then a new light touched her eyes, hope and relief shining through. “You remember.”

“Do _you_?”

Yang’s crystal clear laughter dug a hole in Blake’s chest. How lucky she was, to have found her so soon this time around. “I always remember. And then wait for you to catch up.”

“But why didn’t you answer my texts?” It was such a ridiculous detail to be hung up on, but she’d re-lived all of her past lives in the last hour. She could be excused for having a bad case of tunnel vision.

Yang seemed not to know how to reply. She opened her mouth several times, and closed it again every time. Then, when Blake frowned at her, she managed to mutter: “I- I just couldn’t do it.”

“You… couldn’t? Were you busy?”

“No, Blake. I _couldn’t_. Sometimes, this is just… a lot to deal with. No matter how many times I’ve lived it before. I mean - I always know something bad will happen, but I don't know when, or what it will look like. And then I don't know if it will ever be fixed. Sometimes you're just... gone forever."

Blake looked down in shame, her grip tightening on Yang’s arm. The other girl clearly didn’t want her to feel guilty about it, but the tension between them, the falling-apart stage - no matter how long or short it was, no matter what caused it, it was always _Blake_ ’s fault. It wasn’t fair that Yang had to pay for her poor life decisions every time. “I’m sorry.”

"Don't say that. It's never on you," Yang said. "Even the first Blake - the one whose life you’re stuck repeating again and again - she was just scared. She was doing the best she could."

Blake blinked away the tears blurring her vision. She wanted to look Yang in the eyes and see her clearly. She wanted to cradle her face in her hands and tell her she'd never leave her again, for as long as she had control over herself. It was the most important thing in the world that Yang understood she was here for her now - that they were there for each other.

“She’s left quite a mess for me to fix," she muttered under her breath. The fingers resting on Yang's cheek threaded through some of the blonde locks and lightly tugged on them to bring Yang closer to her. The tips of their noses touched. "But I will, time and time again. I promise.”

Yang’s smile was small, but Blake felt it against her own skin, and that made all the difference. “I know,” she whispered. “I know.”

Maybe she should’ve found it unfair, that being brought together always came at such a high cost. That this was what they had to go through every time, and with no guarantee of things eventually figuring themselves out.

But then she kissed Yang, and nothing else mattered but her, and this moment, and the prospect of their once and future happiness - nothing, nothing, _nothing_.

  


Blake had a new dream that night.

It looked like the waterfall dream, at first, their foreheads pressed against each other, their hands on each other's faces; but the setting was entirely different. Maybe it was just weird dream logic, making the backdrop of their romantic moment look like a city in the sky, but regardless, the feeling inside was different, too. There was a softness in the waterfall dream, too, but there were guilt and pain mixed with it, and an inexplicable sadness, too. This dream, however, felt like breathing again. She didn't know how she knew - maybe it was the different clothes, maybe the different hair, maybe just weird dream logic again - but this moment of peace came after all the hardships, after the weird red flashes and the golden dust and even the waterfall. This was the healing; it was the rebuilding.

One of Yang’s arms - the one made of metal, the one she had her soulmark on - lay across Blake’s chest, hand on her heart. They were breathing each other in, sharing their air and their energy and their life, yellow and purple merging together into white light. The moment their soul bond was forged: not a moment of struggle, not a desperate last call for a second chance, but a simple wish to prolong a kind of joy that could not be contained in a single lifetime.

_It’ll bring back the bad along with the good,_ that Blake whispered, clutching onto Yang like she could tear holes into her skin and pour her heart in there. 

_I’ll take it,_ her Yang replied, _to see you again._

When she woke up in the morning, her fingers danced down Yang’s forearm, Yang’s other arm still curled protectively around her frame, to find both of their scars healed.

**Author's Note:**

> Do you ever stop.... and think that Blake and Yang are in love..... like they're actually soulmates in love and we're going to see it..... Anyway this is a little something I wrote for my friend Reyna's (broadbeard25) birthday in October and I haven't stopped thinking about it I hope you enjoy it too goodnight


End file.
